Hydraulic Cement = GODSEND

Thanks to Doris and Imo for their suggestion of using Water Stop (Hydraulic Cement)...it has otherwise saved us from hours and hours of emptying our shop vac (we were getting 12 gallons an hour)...

 

Anyways...I am tired - physically and mentally.  For the last 2 days I have been chipping and filling and mixing and chipping and filling and mixing.  It all started with the exorbitant amount of rain that we received last May...It raised the water table and it has never had a chance to go down...so this year, when we receive days and days of rain, it adds to the already saturated water table.  Then it finds any crack/hole it can and comes through the foundation.  Which is the problem that we have, we were getting water in about 10 different places...

 

7AM Monday morning, Tanya and I get up, make breakfast and then I mention that with the rain of the last 2 days, we should go check the basement and see if we have water.  She goes down to check and I hear her yell "Mike...you need to come down here"...at which point, I think "I guess that means we have water" ;)  So I go downstairs and see about 12 gallons of water by the bulkhead...and I quickly take a look around the rest of the basement and don't see any water.  We vacuum up the water and empty the Shop Vac and notice that there are 2 pinholes around the door jam where the water is coming in.  Well...I don't know what to do except that we could keep vacuuming it until it stops in the next week or so and then repair the holes when the foundation is dry, so I call my dad because maybe he has a better idea.  He comes over and tells me to call Imo because Imo had mentioned to him of a product that could be applied while there is water coming out...at which point I am very interested and immediately call.  He tells me it is called Water Stop (aka Hydraulic Cement).  I pick some up as well as a masonry chisel because you have to have a hole that it as least 1/4".

 

We also get some sandbags to keep the water from going into the rest of the basement.  I test the hydraulic cement on a crack that I have found behind one of the tool racks that was dripping water slowly.  It works great but I put it on too wet and so it is good I tested it on a spot that wasn't really squirting out.

 

So I chisel out the spots that are the source of major flow and of course when you chisel, it opens the hole and more water starts flowing...luckily hydraulic cement is fully cured in 5 minutes.  So I fill in the cracks and push the cement as far in as it can go because when it dries it expands.  It takes awhile but the flow stops!!  So I fill in the second one and that's when we find out that there is a 3rd spot under the sink.  We remove the sink and there is a constant flow coming from where the sewer pipe goes into the concrete...fill that in and the water is really slowing down.  That's when you see the other spots that are letting water in- either because they already were but not able to be seen with the other water coming in or the stop of the flow has caused new weak spots to appear. 

 

So we continued chipping and filling the rest of the day, and by the end of the night we had stopped a lot of flow, but there was still probably 6 gallons every 4 hours coming in.  So luckily Tanya was nice enough to get up 2 times during the night to vacuum up the water as I was too exhausted to do it.  The next day, I tell work that I have to continue chipping and filling in so I wouldn't be able to come in.  So I continued filling and chipping the rest of the next day and finally got the water to stop flowing in and now we just have 2 spots behind some walls (to be taken down this weekend) to fill in which is flowing about 1 pint every 8 hours which is a MIRACLE.

 

After filling in the cracks, I wired up a new light in the hall upstairs (lower on the stairs) and replaced one of the old cables as it didn't have a full jacket on the wiring and they didn't use wire nuts (it was just electrical tape) so it should be A LOT SAFER now.

 

Anyways...that was my exciting 4 days :(